Harrogate Station Gateway Designs 2025

The latest designs for Harrogate Station Gateway have been published on the North Yorkshire Council (NYC) website.

This follows the council’s successful defence against a legal challenge to the scheme.

These are some of the main points of interest in the designs.

Lower Station Parade/Cheltenham Parade/Station Parade Junction

There’s to be a painted cycle lane across the Lower Station Parade/Cheltenham Parade junction – see the northern part of the design.

This links the bus and cycle lane on Lower Station Parade to the cycle track on Station Parade.

It has been repeatedly pointed out to NYC that it would be helpful to give cyclists a Low-Level Cycle Signal with detector and early release at the top of Lower Station Parade, so they can get ahead of buses turning left into the bus station.

Southbound Cycle Track on Station Parade

There’s to be a one-way (southbound) cycle track on Station Parade – see the central part of the design.

In this part of the scheme, there are two light-controlled pedestrian crossings on raised tables – one to the bus station, and one to the railway station.

The Cycle Track Ends Abruptly at the Junction with Station Bridge

When the cycle track reaches the junction with Station Bridge, it just stops – see the southern part of the design. This means that it abandons people on a very busy dual carriageway, with no cycle provision.

I hope the council has been working on plans to join up its Station Parade cycle track to other facilities, for example to Victoria Avenue. On its own, an isolated bit of cycle track won’t be much use.

Full Business Case

A Full Business Case dated August 2025 has been published alongside the designs.

It says that one of the objectives of the scheme remains to ‘increase levels of walking and cycling by enhancing the attractiveness of facilities, creating direct, legible and aesthetically pleasing routes’.

Related to increasing active mode share, another objective is to reduce vehicle km travelled.

There’s a graphic showing the area that’s within a 20-minute cycle ride of the town centre and railway station.

Current cycling provision is poor (Table 2-11).

A calculation in Table 4-19 claims that the scheme will generate walking and cycling benefits of nearly £8 million.

The active mode benefits are said to outweigh some negative benefits from slightly longer trip times by private car.

Table 4-29 shows a core scenario BCR of 1.2. This is Low Value for Money.

Construction is to start in Autumn 2025 and be completed by the first quarter of 2027 (Table 6-6).